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Connection Management

DevKit is compatible only with Studio 6 and Mule 3. To build Mule 4 connectors, see the Mule SDK documentation.

The Connection Management framework provides multi-tenancy capabilities for a connector (managing multiple simultaneous connections with different credentials for each connector within your application), as well as connection pooling and instance pooling. These benefits are available for most authentication schemes other than OAuth, and for APIs that do not require authentication. Basic Authentication is designated in a connector with the @ConnectionManagement attribute.

This document describes the Connection Management framework, the Java annotations through which it is exposed, and how to implement Basic Authentication support in your connector to authenticate with your service. Examples in this discussion show the use of Basic Authentication with basic username and password authentication (most common), but they can easily be generalized to other non-OAuth protocols such as SAML, Kerberos, LDAP, NTLM, or to create a custom connection.

For OAuth-based authentication DevKit provides functionality using OAuth-related annotations. See OAuth V1 and OAuth V2 for details.

Prerequisites

This document assumes you are familiar with the Anypoint Connector DevKit, have already created a connector project, and are ready to implement authentication on your connector. Further, it assumes you are familiar with the various authentication methods, have compared the different authentication support options in Devkit, and chosen Basic Authentication to connect to your API.

About Connection Management

The Connection Management framework provides the following benefits with minimal effort on the part of the connector developer:

  • Transparent multi-tenancy – A Mule application can open many connections to a single target using different credentials to connect on behalf of many users simultaneously.

  • Connection pooling – Automated management of a pool of instances of the connector class to manage connection resources effectively.

  • Exceptions - The ability to automatically invalidate connections on exceptions and to reconnect as needed.

Connection Management Framework and Authentication Protocols

You can use the Connection Management framework in conjunction with most authentication protocols, such as username and password authentication (most common), SAML, Kerberos, LDAP, and NTLM.

For OAuth-based authentication DevKit provides functionality using OAuth-related annotations. See OAuth V1 and OAuth V2 for details.

Connection Management Annotation

Anypoint DevKit makes it easy to add Connection Management functionality to connectors by creating a new @ConnectionStrategy, just create a new class and annotate it with @ConnectionManagement.

The following table describes the parameters for the @ConnectionManagement annotation.

Parameter Description Required? Default Value

friendlyName

Defines the name that is going to be displayed in the connector configuration pop up.

Yes

configElementName

Defines the name for the configuration that is going to be used in the Mule app.

No

config

Connection Management DevKit Annotations

To use Connection Management in a connector, define and annotate the following methods in the @ConnectionManagement annotated class:

  • @Connect method - Creates a connection

  • @Disconnect method - Explicitly closes a connection

  • @ValidateConnection method - Returns true if a connection is still valid, false otherwise

  • @ConnectionIdentifier method - Returns a prefix used in generating unique identifiers for connector instances in the connection pool

The specific implementation of these methods depends on the target. For more information on annotations, see the Annotation Reference.

@ConnectionManagement(friendlyName="Connector Connection")
public class ConnectionManagementStrategy{
   @Connect
   @TestConnectivity
   public void connect(@ConnectionKey String username, @Password String password){
      ...
   }

   @Disconnect
   public void disconnect() {
       client = null;
   }

   @ValidateConnection
   public boolean isConnected() {
       return client != null;
   }

   @ConnectionIdentifier
   public String connectionId() {
       return client.toString();
   }
}

The methods are called automatically as needed by the DevKit framework; you never call them directly from your code.

Adding @ConnectionManagement Annotation to the @Connector Class

Given the @ConnectionManagement class, this is the way to add it in the @Connector Class.

@Connector(name = "connector")
public class MyConnectorWithConnectionManagement
{
    @ConnectionStrategy
    private ConnectionManagementStrategy strategy;

    /**
    * Processors
    */
}

Ensure that strategy has a public getter and setter (not shown).

@Connect Method

This method is responsible for creating a connection to the target. The @Connect method is called automatically by Mule when the connector starts up, or if the connection to the API has been lost and must be reestablished. When this method finishes, if authentication is successful, the connector instance is ready to make operations.

A method annotated with @Connect must:

  • Be public

  • Throw org.mule.api.ConnectionException (and no other exceptions)

  • Have a void return type

  • Annotate only one method with @Connect

  • Annotate @Connect method with @TestConnectivity

  • Annotate at least one parameter with @ConnectionKey

The specific code that implements the actual connection depends on the API. Here is an example implementation of a @Connect method:

@Connect
@TestConnectivity
   public void connect(@ConnectionKey String username, @Password String password)
     throws ConnectionException {
        try{
           setClient(new SendGrid(username, password));
        }catch(Exception e){
           throw new ConnectionException(INCORRECT_CREDENTIALS,”” , e.getMessage());
        }
      }

The parameters required by this method are the credentials needed for authentication, in this case username and password. Since this method is annotated with @Connect, Anypoint DevKit makes these parameters available both in the configuration element for this connector (as occurs with @Configurable fields), as well as in the message processor whenever it is dragged into a flow. Specified credentials override those that are set in the configuration element.

@TestConnectivity

@TestConnectivity annotation displays a button in Anypoint Studio when configuring the Connector, this button allows the user to test if the connection is successful with his configuration.

@TestConnectivity runs the @Connect method and expects an org.mule.api.ConnectionException, if this exception occurs, then the test fails, if not the connection is assumed successful.

@TestConnectivity can be easily disabled by setting:

@TestConnectivity(active = false)

@ConnectionKey and Connection Pooling

In the Example above, the username parameter in the @Connect method is annotated with @ConnectionKey. If pools are enabled, Mule keeps a pool of simultaneous connections which are used as needed to make calls.

The @ConnectionKey annotation marks that this field is used as the key for this particular connection within the connection pool, so once a connection for this username has been created and added to the pool, it is reused rather than recreated for each request.

Choosing a Connection Key

For username and password authentication, the username is the obvious choice for @ConnectionKey. For other protocols, identify the value that is most obviously associated with different users and access privileges that connect to your service, and use this value as your @ConnectionKey.

@Disconnect Method

This annotation indicates the method inside a @ConnectionManagement class that is responsible for disposal of a connection. This method is called when the connector is shut down or the connection is explicitly terminated.

A method annotated with @Disconnect must:

  • Be public

  • Take no input parameters

  • Have a void return type

  • The class must have exactly one annotated @Disconnect method

@Disconnect
public void disconnect()
{
   if (connection != null)
   {
     try
         {
         connection.logout();
         }
     catch (ConnectionException e)
         {
         e.printStackTrace();
         }
     finally
         {
         connection = null;
         }
   }
}

If the connector currently has a connection open, this code calls connection.logout(), a client method that explicitly de-authenticates and closes the connection. The finally block ensures that, if the logout fails for any reason, the connection is still set to null, so the connector does not again try to reference that connector instance.

@ValidateConnection Method

This method is called by Mule to check whether the connection is actually open or not.

A method annotated with @ValidateConnection must:

  • Be public

  • Take no input parameters

  • Return boolean or java.lang.Boolean

  • Only one method on the class can be annotated with @ValidateConnection

@ValidateConnection
public boolean isConnected()
{
    return connection != null;
}

In this example, to determine whether the connection is active the code simply checks if the connection parameter is null. A different implementation may be required for other connectors, depending on the protocol.

@ConnectionIdentifier Method

This annotation identifies a method inside the @ConnectionManagement class that returns a unique identifier for the connection, used for logging and debugging.

A method annotated with @ConnectionIdentifier must:

  • Be public

  • Not be static

  • Not take arguments

  • Return java.lang.String

  • Annotate only one method with @ConnectionIdentifier

This code returns the connection SessionId as an identifier (if available). The SessionHeader object in this case contains header information about the current connection to the API, including the session ID.

@ConnectionIdentifier
public String connectionId() {
if (connection != null){
    return connection.getSessionHeader().getSessionId();
    } else {
        return  null;
    }
}

@ReconnectOn Annotation

This annotation deprecates @InvalidateConnectionOn annotation. It now receives a list of exceptions instead of just a single exception, and can be used at both the class and processor levels.

This annotation is used for exception handling related to connections. It can be used at class level or at a method level. If the Connector or Processor throws an exception of this class, @ReconnectOn automatically invalidates the connection. @ReconnectOn receives a list containing the classes of the exceptions to be caught (see below for an example). When an exception occurs, the @ReconnectOn behavior is based on the configured reconnection strategy. See Configuring Reconnection Strategies for more details.

@Processor
@ReconnectOn(exceptions = {InvalidSessionFault.class, PasswordChangedException.class})
public void myOperation(@Optional String source,
                        @Optional Object destination) throws InvalidSessionFault, PasswordChangedException, InvalidParameterException
{
    /**
    * CODE FOR MY OPERATION
    */
}